The Big O and all of its settings and characters are owned by Cartoon Network, Sunrise, and Bandai Visual.
THE BIG O:
ACT 28
SCAPEGOAT
Chapter Seven: Showtime
What was the deal with that crazy android? Roger fumed as he leaned on the railing and gazed out at Paradigm City. The city was so peaceful. Well, that wasn't true, was it? There was smoke. Gunshots could be heard in the distance. If he listened intently, he could make out shouting and glass breaking. He sighed from his view on the rooftop patio, his anger melting into depression. All of the times he had risked his life to save the city from destruction and here Paradigm City was destroying itself.
"Roger?" Dorothy's gentle voice called to him.
"Yes, Dorothy?" he turned giving her a rueful smile.
"Are you still angry?" she asked quietly from the doorway.
"No, I guess not," he sighed as he turned around to lean against the concrete railing separating him from open space. "To be honest, I'm more angry with myself than you. I shouldn't have lost my temper like that."
"Roger," Dorothy walked over to him. "Something has been bothering you. It's not just the riots in the city."
"Something has been bothering you too," he countered, "but yeah, something has been bugging me." He turned to gaze over the turbulent city. "This place, Paradigm City, what is it? Is it even real? Am I real?"
"As an android, I question the validity of my own existence often," Dorothy admitted, "but I am surprised to hear those words coming from you."
"Hopefully I'm just losing my mind," Roger bitterly quipped. "The problem is, I can't bring myself to care about anything anymore. I don't know if anything or anybody is real. The things I've seen. What I've experienced. How do I know that any of this is real?"
Dorothy responded by hoping up onto the railing the way she often did. Roger flinched, even though her superior sense of balance made her perfectly safe. Ever since she had almost hurled herself over the side to save Roger when Red Destiny's memory drive was in her head two weeks back he felt nervous when Dorothy stood on the edge like that.
"I understand, Roger," Dorothy announced. "As an android, I don't know if I'm real either. I suppose the only way to find out is to end it all and explore the afterlife. I am going to jump Roger, do you care to join me?"
Once again, Dorothy had succeeded in saying the last thing Roger expected. "What?" the horrified negotiator gasped. "Dorothy, what are you saying?"
"If I am not real, there is no point going on," she said stoically. "If the city is not real, what I do makes no difference, and I will not be missed. If nothing is real, whether I live or die is of no consequence."
"Dorothy!" the negotiator snapped. "Stop it! You're talking crazy!"
"Yes, I am," she said as she turned to face him. "I sound ridiculous don't I? I have to accept what my senses tell me and make extrapolations on what they do not. It is the only way to gather enough data to make a decision."
"Huh?" Roger winced in embarrassment. "Oh I get it. You were putting me on, weren't you? You were never going to jump."
"It would be stupid, wouldn't it?" Dorothy agreed. "It makes no sense to give up just because you face a paradox. There is nothing to be gained by that. The smart thing to do is admit there is something you don't understand and go on. Don't you have a rule for that?"
Roger gave an embarrassed smile and nodded his head. "If you want to live a happy life in this city, leave memories alone when they pop up. That's Roger Smith's Rule Number One."
"Do memories pop up for you, Roger Smith?" the girl asked.
"Yes…" He muttered childishly as he rolled his eyes and looked away.
"Why aren't you leaving them alone, then?" came her inevitable response. "Don't you wish to live a happy life?"
"Of course I do," he mumbled.
"The answer should be self-evident then," Dorothy concluded. She hopped off the railing to stand next to Roger. "Did a different perspective help?"
Roger glanced at the ground and nodded ruefully before lifting his eyes to Dorothy's ivory colored face. "Yes, Dorothy, it helps. You're right, of course. I made those rules for a reason. If I keep second guessing myself, I won't be able to do anything. I suppose thanks are in order."
"I would think so," Dorothy replied.
"On the other hand, I don't appreciate you threatening to kill yourself," he added sternly. "Just for that, you aren't allowed to stand up on the railing until the riots are over."
"Roger you are being childish," the android protested.
"My house, my rules," he retorted as he turned to walk back inside. "If I have to follow my rules, you do too." He stopped at the door and looked behind him. "Besides, who knows if a sniper or a flying vehicle of some kind will show up? I've made up my mind. Until the city calms down, no more standing on the railing. If you got to be up high, there are plenty of pillars to stand on." He disappeared inside the mansion leaving Dorothy outside.
"You are a louse, Roger Smith," she decided. A crash of thunder drowned out anything else and her hair and dress blew forward as an explosion leveled a building a few blocks behind her. Several windows on the mansion broke from the force of the blast.
"Dorothy!" Roger ran right back out. "What happened?" he asked as he grasped her shoulders. "Are you hurt?"
The android didn't answer. She seemed more interested in the negotiator's strong hands on her shoulders than the smoking ruin behind her.
Roger looked over her shoulder and saw the damaged building. He also saw the smoke trail of a rocket soar up into the sky. It came from the ruins of the central dome. The center dome that had held the headquarters of the Paradigm Corporation. The place where just two weeks ago he had fought Alex Rosewater and Big Fau. "Blast it!" he swore as he turned to dash back inside, Dorothy close at his heels. "Alex Rosewater," he snarled.
In the huge hanger inside the hollowed out building, Norman was monitoring police channels on a desk sized device with small circular screens. He glanced down to see his employer run towards the long black sedan parked beside Big O's massive gunmetal feet. "Ah, Master Roger…"
"Norman!" Roger shouted as he entered "Send the prairie dog to the central dome! Big Fau is loose again!"
"Very well sir," Norman replied. "Do you think you will be home for dinner? I'm preparing the last of the chicken."
"This shouldn't take long," Roger said as he and the android entered the long black car he called the Griffin. "I have a feeling that Rosewater and Big Fau aren't in real fighting condition."
"Very good sir," the butler nodded. "Take care."
As Roger drove the Griffin like a racecar driver, Dorothy asked from the passenger side. "Why don't you ride Big O in the prairie dog? The streets are hardly in any condition to allow fast transport."
That's just what I need, Roger thought wryly. Traveling underground in Big O will just guarantee that I'll get hallucinations and experience things that can't possibly exist. That would really be smart. That's what Roger said on the inside. On the outside, he muttered, "Don't distract the driver."
Too late. He was distracted. He was already questioning the wisdom of bringing Dorothy along. During both his total reality shaking hallucinations, both he and Dorothy had been in Big O while battling either Big Fau or three foreign megadeuses that contained parts of Big Fau. By duplicating the conditions he almost ensured that he would hallucinate. Did Big Fau contain some device that caused these visions? Would Dorothy's presence help send him into an imaginary world or was she part of the reason he could find his way out again?
He turned the corner and saw exactly what he didn't want to see. Military police vehicles setting up roadblocks to contain a riot. They weren't very successful either. People were spilling out of the clouds of tear gas to assault the armored men with transparent body shields. It was a mess.
Grunting, the black clad negotiator turned into an alley. A brick wall blocked the end of it. Flicking a switch on the dashboard, Roger activated the Griffin's machine guns and twin streams of bullets cut through the wall like buzzsaws. In a second the negotiator had cut a rectangular outline as a ram flipped up from under the front of the car to protect the bumper and grill. The Griffin's reinforced chassis broke through the weakened wall without slowing. On the other side, the black car soared through the air to land on the highway that had been closed due to roadblocks and martial law.
The Griffin tore through a divider as it careened in a wide drunken turn to make the ninety-degree maneuver necessary to avoid hitting the wall on the other side. Soon Roger and Dorothy were speeding towards the central dome as more rockets flew through the air from their destination.
"I still think that traveling underground with Big O would entail less risk," Dorothy said quietly.
"Didn't ask you," Roger responded off handedly. The Griffin plowed through barriers and signs saying 'BRIDGE OUT' without slowing. A black-gloved finger pressed a button on the dashboard marked 'TURBO BOOST' and the car soared in the air above the gap where a section of the bridge had fallen away during the Big Fau's previous attack on the city.
Dorothy was glad that her artificial neck apparently didn't suffer from whiplash and wondered how Roger would fare the next day.
In the cockpit of Big Fau, Alex Rosewater laughed as he fired missiles into the air. "Come on, Roger Smith! Come and meet your doom! Today will mark the beginning of a new order! This city will have a new god!"
In the Paradigm Corporation's temporary headquarters, Francis Erskine received a phone call from Military Police Headquarters.
"The white megadeus is attacking the city!" the voice on the phone exclaimed. "What do we do?"
"Do what you have to," Erskine ordered.
As the Griffin sped up to the ruined central dome, the shattered form of Big Fau could be seen in the distance. Nearly a third of the white megadeus was missing. How its left leg remained attached to the ruined body was a mystery, for the left side had been blown off the Big Fau in the same blast that had totaled Paradigm Headquarters.
"Humph," the negotiator snorted. "This shouldn't take long." Roger used the straight track of road to steer with one hand. "Big O!" he shouted into his watch, "It's Showtime!"
Was it Roger's imagination, or was Dorothy rolling her eyes?
Transported underneath the ground by the four locomotive vehicle nicknamed, the 'prairie dog', the black megadeus could reach anywhere the ancient subway system could before the event that erased everyone's memories and left Paradigm City alone in the world of amnesia.
Like the dead rising out of their graves on judgment day, the black megadeus tore out of the ground sending concrete and asphalt flying in all directions. The massive robot thundered forward away from the crater its appearance had created and stood in the middle of the highway heading towards the main dome.
"There you are, Roger Smith," spat Alex Rosewater, a sinister grin on his skull like face. "Now we'll see if you've got what it takes to be a domineus."
The long black car drove right between Big O's feet before it braked and then backed up to enter a garage that was at the bottom of the black megadeus' right foot. Soon Roger and Dorothy were in the control room.
Roger sat in the cockpit and put his feet into the pedals. He crossed his arms as two curved arms ending in joysticks closed to encircle his chair. A transparent bubble closed to seal him off from the rest of the circular room leaving Dorothy to stand nearby and peer out the rose-colored semitransparent wall in front of them. At Roger's feet were three circular monitors. The larger center screen displayed a message: "CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD YE NOT GUILTY".
"Big O, action!" Roger exclaimed.
"Why do men say these things?" Dorothy wondered out loud. A bulb flashed on the communications panel. "Roger, Norman is trying to contact us."
"What is it, Norman?" Roger asked as he flicked a switch. "No offense, but I'm a little busy here."
The circular screen on the right activated to display the face of a concerned Norman Burg. "Master Roger! I just realized. Big O is loaded with less lethal ammunition! The missiles and armor piercing shells were left back here!"
"Looks like dinner will be later than I thought," Roger grunted. "Thanks for the heads-up, Norman. In all the excitement, I completely forgot myself."
"What now?" was Dorothy's dour query.
"Now we do this the hard way," Roger replied as he activated the lasers.
In Big Fau's cockpit, Alex Rosewater sneered. "I don't think that you have what it takes to pilot the Big, Negotiator. I think that Big Fau can defeat you using only one hand." He hit the button on his joystick and the turbine on Big Fau's remaining forearm sprung to life.
"Roger, Big Fau's hand…" Dorothy warned as the white megadeus' hand and forearm launched to become a deadly projectile.
"I see it, Dorothy!" at the flick of a switch, the anchor on Big O's right hip shot out propelled by miniature turbojets, and trailed a massive chain behind it. When the anchor had secured itself to the ground, Roger reeled in the chain to pull the black megadeus to the side and out of the path of Big Fau's hand. "That was too close," the negotiator breathed.
"What's the matter, Negotiator," Rosewater mocked. "Lost your nerve? I think there are parts in your megadeus that would restore Big Fau, nicely, don't you agree? Think of your Big as an organ donor…"
Two laser projectors extended on flexible periscope-like extendors from the white megadeus' back. Roger responded by using Big O's arm shields to protect his body. "Why the hell am I on the defensive?" Roger grunted. "This is ridiculous!"
"Roger," Alex Rosewater's voice was heard from a speaker. "I can't help wondering… Just who do you think you are? You came from an orphanage before your foster parents adopted you. Did your parents really exist? If you dug up their graves, would you find anything, or would their coffins be empty? Makes you wonder if you're just an actor playing a role, doesn't it?"
"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" Roger roared. "It makes no difference whether I had parents or…" Wait? Why was Alex asking him those questions? How did he know about his insecurities? What did Gordon Rosewater do to Roger, and how much did Alex know?
"You have something that belongs to me, Negotiator," Alex continued. "If you surrender it to me, I'll let you go back to the tomato farm without a fight. Or do you prefer to go back as catsup?"
Something that belongs to him? What could that be? He glanced to his left and saw Dorothy looking out the semitransparent barrier at Big Fau. Her young, normally lineless face was contorted in terror. Dorothy was afraid! Why? The answer came to him instantly. The last time she reacted like that was when Big O's archetype threatened her in Swartzwald's sanctum. She wasn't merely afraid of destruction, she was afraid of losing her identity, of becoming part of that massive metal monstrosity, just like she did when her memory core was installed in Big Fau. So she hadn't escaped without some emotional scars; he didn't think that she could.
Rosewater seemed to know what to say to push the right buttons. Both he and Dorothy were terrified, even though Big Fau was nearly blown in half and Big O was in top condition. It didn't make any sense! Why was he so afraid? It wasn't as if the sky had been replaced by giant stage lights…
He looked at his monitors. It wasn't possible. Huge metal girders supporting giant stage lights had replaced the sky. Instead of the joysticks at the end of the control arms, he was gripping two sealed tomato cans.
"Oh no…" the negotiator quietly sobbed. "Not now…"
At Roger's feet the large center screen displayed a message: "CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD YE NOT".
On a desk filled with hourglasses a phone rings. Norman's hand picks up the receiver and a sinister voice says:
Next: Back to Reality
